The
First and Only Weekly Online Fanzine Devoted to the Life and Works of Edgar
Rice BurroughsSince
1996 ~ Over 10,000 Webpages and Webzines in ArchiveVolume
0733andERB
C.H.A.S.E.R ENCYCLOPEDIA A Collector's Hypertexted and Annotated
Storehouse of Encyclopedic Resources. . . by an Exhausted ScholarpresentTARZAN: THE LOST ADVENTUREAuthor Joe R. Lansdale's authorized re-working of
an unfinished 82 page manuscript by ERBCover Art ~ Publishing History ~ SummaryCast ~ Lord Greystoke's Gallery

For nearly fifty
years, Edgar Rice Burroughs' last Tarzan manuscript lay untouched and unfinished,
locked away in a vault. It was the stuff of legend until, finally, the
magnificent tale was completed, with the help of award-winning author Joe
R. Lansdale.

Once again the roar of Tarzan
resounds through Africa as the Lord of the Jungle battles the savage creatures
of the wild and helps a beautiful woman search for ancient Ur, lost city
of gold. But Tarzan discovers they aren't alone in their quest. For evil
follows in his path, and terror awaits him and his fierce lion Jad-bal-ja.
Incredible treasures lie in the ancient city, and horrors even more awesome
hunger to destroy the mighty hero.

23 un-named chapters ~ 208
pages

A REVIEW
Aping the Ape-man A Vine Madness: Tarzan takes on his teeth-baring jungle enemies
one more time in "Tarzan: The Lost Adventure."Long after his death, Edgar Rice Burroughs returns with a brand-new
Tarzan novel By Andrew X. Pham

WITH THE RECENT rash of posthumous publications, putting a few chapters
or an outline into a safe seems to be the best way to get a book published
without doing too much of the work yourself. Also, your publisher will
likely market it as one of your masterpieces.

Several decades after his death, Edgar Rice Burroughs, one of the kings
of the pulps and grandfathers of science fiction, has a third posthumous
novel, Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, on bookstore shelves. Given the
great hoopla surrounding this latest unearthing, Burroughs' own explanation
of how he became the creator of Tarzan provides a useful perspective: "I
had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made
up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read, [then]
I could write stories just as rotten ... just as entertaining and probably
a lot more so" (from The Washington Post, Oct. 27, 1929).

Burroughs published his first Tarzan book, Tarzan of the Apes,
in 1914, and, on average, hacked out about one Tarzan book every year until
1939. After an eight-year hiatus, Burroughs issued Tarzan and the Foreign
Legion, his last Tarzan book (penned in his hand), in 1947. The next
two Tarzan books rolled off the press after Burroughs' death (1950), one
in 1964 and the other in 1965. Another unfinished and untitled Tarzan typescript
of 83 pages was discovered in Burroughs' safe, and the publishing vultures
have been squawking over the find ever since.

However, not much happened for 30 years until Dark Horse Comics rustled
up one Joe R. Lansdale to beef up the half-finished manuscript. With a
strong stable of pulp-era-oriented artists, Dark Horse put out a nice four-part
comic-book version in softcover. Sales pronounced it a resounding success,
and Dark Horse rushed it out as a piece of hardcover fiction.

Lost City of Ur

IN THIS NEW/OLD TALE, Tarzan returns to his African jungle from England,
where he has been living with his wife, Jane, under the alias of Lord Greystoke.
Back home, Tarzan chances upon a scientific expedition that ran afoul of
a murderous group of Foreign Legion deserters. The Ape-man quickly becomes
enmeshed in rescuing a beautiful damsel and her professorial father from
the bad legionnaires, the dangers of the jungle, a monster from the world
at the center of the Earth and the mad king of the lost city of Ur.

Lansdale imitates Burroughs not at his best but at his worst. If Lansdale
has any talent as a writer, he has squandered all of it trying to emulate
the Burroughs of the early years. In fact, Lansdale tried so hard that
he often begins every other sentence with "Tarzan." Sometimes he even succeeds
in crafting pulpy blunders as perversely magnificent as Burroughs'. For
instance, in the second half of the book (written entirely by Lansdale),
he describes a fight scene: "The impact shattered the jailer's head like
an overripe fruit, and the contents of this fruit sprayed the guards and
the messengers, and in that instant, a blinking of an eye really, Tarzan
swung the chains, one in either hand, fast and rhythmically, taking out
heads and knees. In less than an instant, four men lay dead and two were
bolting out of the dungeon and down the hall."

How Burroughs' 83-page manuscript became Lansdale's 200-page novel isn't
as surprising as why Lansdale was permitted to contribute such rot to an
innocent manuscript in the first place. Several convenient coincidences
hurry the plot to a predictable ending. Worse, it's open-ended in such
a way that other serials seem quite inevitable.

It's too bad that Lansdale (and Dark Horse) can't envision something
greater. Although Burroughs' particular brand of fiction and his "golden
age" have long faded with his passing, the Tarzan series will always have
a sizable pubescent readership. Anyone toiling in the genre ought to have
enough sense to write decently, so that at least these future writers won't
be prematurely stunted.

Tarzan -- the concept -- still has merit as escapism entertainment for
both the adult and the juvenile markets. But what the genre needs isn't
someone who can ape Burroughs to a fault. It needs someone who can at least
make Tarzan, well, intelligible to a modern age, and maybe not so much
like a mechanical action-figure from a distant past.

Pete Janes wrote: "As the editor of this title for DH I was
the first to say that the project was going to meet with mixed reviews.
Lansdale is a sort of cilantro of writers: love his stuff or it leaves
a bad taste, no gray area. DH publisher Mike Richardson loves Lansdale,
and between the two of them edits were a constant battle. I relied on Danton
Burroughs's/Burroughs Inc. approval of the text and concentrated on the
book's illustrations and design. We were trying to simultaneously meet
the expectations of older, longtime Burroughs fans and a newer generation
of comics readers, and apparently missed. I won't apologize for this project,
nor will I throw under the bus any of the hard-working folks who contributed
to it, but I will say that it was a blast to pull together."

LORD GREYSTOKE'S GALLERY

Page 1 of ERB's original unfinished, unpublished manuscript of this, his last Tarzan novel.